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Nyetimber to produce 2m bottles of English fizz

01 August 2019 By Patrick Schmitt

English sparkling wine brand Nyetimber plans to reach two million bottles in average annual production, which is almost six times its current yearly sales.

Heerema with Nyetimber winemaker Cherie Spriggs

In an exclusive interview with the drinks business earlier this year, Nyetimber owner Eric Heerema said that he was aiming to produce 2m bottles of fizz in the near future, based on existing and impending plantings.

Such a figure is almost six times the sales of Nyetimber for 2018, which amounted to around 350,000 bottles, and double the amount produced by the estate from last year’s bumper harvest, which saw the producer pass the 1m bottle mark for the first time.

Telling db that Nyetimber’s present sales figure was “where we want to be”, he also said that the brand was England’s biggest producer of sparkling wine.

Admitting that present demand for Nyetimber fizz represented less than half the quantity being made by the brand today, he added that “sales seem low compared with production because there is long period between harvesting and selling.”

He then said that his plan was to double current production.

“We passed the 1m bottle mark from 170ha in 2018, but we have 240ha under vine, and this year we are planting a further 25ha. We are looking to reach well over 300ha by the end of next year, so we will eventually reach 2m bottles in average annual production.”

While not vast by Champagne standards – it’s the equivalent in scale of a historic house such as Pol Roger – for an English wine producer using only estate-grown grapes, it’s big.

With the amount of all English fizz estimated to be around 10m bottles from the 2018 harvest, Nyetimber already represents 10% of the total production.

This means it has a similar share of the English sparkling wine market as Moët & Chandon has of Champagne.

Please click here to read a full interview with Nyetimber’s Eric Heerema.